Castle View Apartments — Hotel in okres Český Krumlov

Our family booked 1 night stay through Expedia at a two bedroom apartment at the Castle View Apartment. This turns out to be the worst hotel/apartment we have stayed for our European trip. The apartment is more likely a poorly managed AirBnb, rather than a hotel bookable through Expedia or Booking.com. ||We booked the premium room of the Castle View Apartment, a 1st floor two-bedroom apartment. On the positive side, the room is spacious and clean. ||However, the apartment is poorly managed with horrible customer service. This is the major reason that leads to the current rating. If you plan to use this hotel/apartment, please be aware of the follows:||1. The apartment doesn’t have any air conditioning (central air conditioning or room air conditioning), so it can be hot during summer month. This will be especially true if you book a room at the attic (listed as 2nd floor apartment).||2. The hotel provides a kettle in room, but it doesn’t provide any bottled water, drinks and/or snacks. The sheet is clean for the room, but don’t expect anything else. ||3. There is a single receptionist at the apartment. That is the key problem. When we arrived at the hotel, the receptionist is not at his station. The Expedia site advertise that the hotel front desk opens from 8am – 6pm. But the reality is that the receptionist is only at his station a fraction of that time. During our interaction with the receptionist, we noticed that the receptionist wants to limit his commitment to man the front desk as much as possible. We did receive email from the Castle View Apartment saying that our room key and check-in instruction will be locked in the safe at the door. We retrieved the only available key at the apartment, but the receptionist then showed up, and told us that we had the wrong key, and had to move room. ||4. The receptionist is very rude, unprofessional, and discriminator. We observed that he spoke English to other guests. But when communicating with us, he pretended to not to speak English at all, and communicating in Czech, which we didn’t understand. This creates huge confusion and delay, and almost caused us to miss the sunset photo at Cesky Krumlov. During payment, the receptionist also pretends to not understand our instruction, and select without our consent to pay in USD instead of CZK as credit card payment, which leads to an over charge in credit card transaction fee. ||5. Please be aware that the parking of the hotel is a 10-15 min walk to the Hotel in cobbler stone. Also, the check out time of the hotel is strictly at 10am, way earlier than usual hotel check out time. ||Overall, our family’s experience at the Castle View Apartment is equated to a poorly managed AirBnb, rather than hotels we have previously booked/stayed through Expedia or booking.com. Although our room is fine, the rude, unprofessional and absentee behavior of the receptionist contributed most to...

Our family booked 1 night stay through Expedia at a two bedroom apartment at the Castle View Apartment. This turns out to be the worst hotel/apartment we have stayed for our European trip. The apartment is more likely a poorly managed AirBnb, rather than a hotel bookable through Expedia or Booking.com. ||We booked the premium room of the Castle View Apartment, a 1st floor two-bedroom apartment. On the positive side, the room is spacious and clean. ||However, the apartment is poorly managed with horrible customer service. This is the major reason that leads to the current rating. If you plan to use this hotel/apartment, please be aware of the follows:||1. The apartment doesn’t have any air conditioning (central air conditioning or room air conditioning), so it can be hot during summer month. This will be especially true if you book a room at the attic (listed as 2nd floor apartment).||2. The hotel provides a kettle in room, but it doesn’t provide any bottled water, drinks and/or snacks. The sheet is clean for the room, but don’t expect anything else. ||3. There is a single receptionist at the apartment. That is the key problem. When we arrived at the hotel, the receptionist is not at his station. The Expedia site advertise that the hotel front desk opens from 8am – 6pm. But the reality is that the receptionist is only at his station a fraction of that time. During our interaction with the receptionist, we noticed that the receptionist wants to limit his commitment to man the front desk as much as possible. We did receive email from the Castle View Apartment saying that our room key and check-in instruction will be locked in the safe at the door. We retrieved the only available key at the apartment, but the receptionist then showed up, and told us that we had the wrong key, and had to move room. ||4. The receptionist is very rude, unprofessional, and discriminator. We observed that he spoke English to other guests. But when communicating with us, he pretended to not to speak English at all, and communicating in Czech, which we didn’t understand. This creates huge confusion and delay, and almost caused us to miss the sunset photo at Cesky Krumlov. During payment, the receptionist also pretends to not understand our instruction, and select without our consent to pay in USD instead of CZK as credit card payment, which leads to an over charge in credit card transaction fee. ||5. Please be aware that the parking of the hotel is a 10-15 min walk to the Hotel in cobbler stone. Also, the check out time of the hotel is strictly at 10am, way earlier than usual hotel check out time. ||Overall, our family’s experience at the Castle View Apartment is equated to a poorly managed AirBnb, rather than hotels we have previously booked/stayed through Expedia or booking.com. Although our room is fine, the rude, unprofessional and absentee behavior of the receptionist contributed most to...

The bad and the good:

Bad: -Apparently each extra person you bring to one of their suites is 40 euro extra a night a person(see below) -Left a tidy request on door. Room was not tidied, towels were exchanged only. For the price they charge this is unacceptable. -Extremely poorly sound proofed. Heard every step and word from upstairs guests -Check in staff only there a few hours a day, quite rushed and irritable we found. -Given these deficits I don't see how they are rated a 4 star property.

The good: -Cesky has 10, 000 tourist beds (per our free walking tour) in town, so there are lots of good locations, but castle view did have a good view. Not the best in town, but good. -The restaurant across from the hotel (literally 4 steps from front door) is amazing. -Suite is spacious.

Expanding on the 40 euro comment: Upon Czech in I was informed that the AMEX portal I used to book through gave me the price for ONE visitor in my suite. I was informed that because my wife was with me I would be charged an extra 40 EURO per NIGHT (stayed 2) for the extra person. NO EXCEPTIONS (covid had basically rendered the town empty). Now, this place doesn't even have breakfast. I could understand 10-15 euro a night extra if there were a LARGE buffet breakfast provided, but no. This was just for one more human to occupy the room for the night. I felt like I was being extorted, because I had no warning for this (the check in staff explained to me the phone number AMEX provided didn't work and the email they were provided by amex didn't either) and a quick check on my phone showed dozens of other places for 40 euro a night within 2 minutes walking distance (I had already paid 138 euro for the 2 nights)... I explained this and spoke with the property owner. He essentially said this is my fault (what hotel without breakfast doesn't post prices based on double occupancy?) though did give me a discount of 5 euro/night; so I paid 70 euro extra for the 2 nights. Overall it was fairly uncomfortable and I was not pleased with the level of service we received from this 4 star property. -Elaboration on tidying: as you can see in the picture, the instructions left to us was to leave the notice on the door and you can get cleaning service between 10am-12pm. We wanted the bed made up and the room tidied while we were out exploring the town; came home to find new towels and nothing else touched in the suite. Was very disappointed we're expected to pay premium prices in Cesky Kromlov and get hostel quality service.

In response to the OWNER reply: Amex doesn't have an option to list number of people. All that's listed on the advert is "Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on property policy". Charging 60% extra because someone books a SUITE for 2 people is obscene and way out of character for HOSPITALITY. If your focus is on guest satisfaction, I'd say you...